SG1: Ra or Not
by Michael Bradley-Robbins
Summary: SG-1 finally lands on a civilized planet seemingly untouched by the Goa'uld. But when a relatively powerless young Goa'uld named Pele learns of the planet, she seizes the opportunity to gain favor with the System Lords.
1. Discovery

Chf'aza sat at her desk, bored out of her mind. With her daughter on the throne, she could finally focus on what she loved: research and development. She'd been responsible for numerous technological advancements, and now she was working on making cars lighter and more efficient. She had everything worked out; all she needed was steel. And her nephew was gladly helping by supervising the mining crew.

"Aza?"

She turned around to see her nephew covered with dirt and mud, glistening with sweat. Hra'vakh never sweated unless it was incredibly hot. "What is it, Edan?" she asked.

"You should come and see something," he replied. She got up and followed him out to the waiting car. "We were digging in a promising spot," he explained, "when we came across something that doesn't look like iron."

"Well, what is it?" she asked.

"We have no idea."

"Maybe I can shed some light on it," she shrugged. The dig site was several miles away, and the terrain was boring, flat, and brown. The grass had died due to lack of rain, and she wished there was some way she could control the weather other than through prayer, which worked every once in a great while. But at least water was abundant in te seas and rivers.

The car stopped at a large cliff where a dark grey piece of metal glinted out of the brown dirt. "That?" she asked upon observing it.

"Yes," Edan replied. They got out of the car and climbed the dirt pile up to the exposed piece of the object. She took a look at it and brushed some of the dirt and mud away. "Well, it's metallic," she observed. "But that's obvious. Certainly nothing I've ever seen. Have you tried taking a sample for analysis?"

"Our tools can't touch it."

"What about the diamond-coated blades?"

He held up one of the expensive blades. It was a shambles, the edge bent in all manner of directions, blackened by the sparks of grinding metal on metal. "Carbon-steel, diamond coated. Not a scratch on the object."

Aza was intrigued. "What else have you found?"

"Well..." He led her down to something made of the same material but located near the ground. "There's this."

She took a trowel from the tool palette and started moving the dirt away from the metal. She wasn't worried about damaging it, so she was a bit rougher than usual. "Is it an artifact from our ancestors?" she wondered.

"No telling," Edan shrugged, joining her and handing her a brush. "It was definitely made by somebody."

"Oh?"

"Look at this beveled edge," he said, pointing his trowel at the edge of the object they were unearthing. "Nature doesn't form these, especially out of a metal this tough."

"Well, if it's that tough, let's get out the heavier artillery." She traded her trowel for a pick, and started hacking at the tough dirt. A large portion fell away and revealed a series of symbols arranged in what appeared to be a circle. They were glyphs of some language, but not of any she knew. And she knew every language on Hra. She dug a bit further with the trowel and unearthed the entire top of the object: the thirty-eight symbols were aligned in two tiers around a large orange, glass dome. She turned to Edan and said, "I want this entire area excavated as soon as possible. I'm going to call Sakara, Drak and Liasi to see if they can spare anybody."

"I'm sure Danh would be glad to help," Edan chuckled. He turned and shouted to the workers, "We're not abandoning this thing after all. Double time, everybody! I want twenty yards around this area clear to ground level by next Der'eshal!"

* * *

Jack O'Neill sat, twiddling his thumbs as Teal'c sat across from him. "Isn't there anything better to do than this?" he asked rhetorically.

"I suppose not, O'Nell," the jaffa replied.

"We haven't seen any action in two weeks."

"Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c to the briefing room," said General Hammond over the intercom.

"Great," Jack said sarcastically. "Might as well. Better than sitting around this dump."He walked with Teal'c to the briefing room and took a seat next to Major Carter. "How are you?" he asked absentmindedly.

"Fine, Sir," she replied. "It's about time we came across a friendly world."

"Friendly?" he said skeptically, raising his eyebrow. "Nine out of the last ten planets turned out to be under Goa'uld control."

General Hammond entered the room and started explaining the upcoming mission. "As some of you know, P6X-556 was recently added to the list of accessible addresses. We sent a MALP through and discovered a sentient species on the other side that appears to be technologically advanced enough to possibly provide some kind of defense against the Goa'uld. Your mission is to make contact with the people of P6X-556 and attempt to establish a relationship with them."

"Boilerplate," Jack muttered. "Might as well go suit up."

Half an hour later, SG-1 stood at the stargate as Sergeant Harriman dialed the address and the wormhole opened. The team walked through the event horizon and out the other side. Jack looked around and saw two of the aliens peering up over rocks, training pistols on the team. He instinctively raised his P90 and trained it on the lighter-skinned of the two.

"Lower your weapons," Daniel said. "They're not firing."

"I can see that," Jack replied, not moving. "But those look an awful lot like Desert Eagles."

"Put the guns down," Daniel pressed. He stepped forward and put his hands in the air. "We come in peace. We're explorers."

The aliens looked at each other and then slowly rose up and came out to meet Daniel, holstering their guns but still keeping their hands ready. The two of them were obviously females and mammallian, but their skin appeared to be smooth like a salamander's and completely hairless. Each one was a shade of green, though one was lighter than the other. They had tails, which twitched back and forth warily.

"Ken tir?" asked the lighter-skinned one.

"What did she say?" Jack asked.

"I...I don't know," Daniel stammered. "It's like nothing I've ever heard."

"Ken tir?" the alien repeated, more sternly this time.

"I am Daniel Jackson," he said, putting his hand on his chest.

"I am Daniel Jackson," she repeated.

"No, that's my name," Daniel replied. He gestured to himself again and clarified, "Daniel Jackson." The alien nodded.

"Daniel Jackson," she said, gesturing to him. Then she placed her hand on her own chest and said, "Chf'aza. Tir Daniel Jackson, Ier Chf'aza. Ipf Ra'liasi."

Daniel turned around and pointed at Major Carter. "Ipf Major Carter." He pointed at Jack and said, "Ipf Colonel O'Neill."

Ra'liasi snorted and then cleared her throat, trying to hold back a grin. Chf'aza smirked and said, "Colonel O'Neill nes ipf'vakh; es pep'vakh. Pep Colonel O'Neill."

"I think I just learned pronouns," Daniel mused. "Ipf is she, and pep is he. Tir is you, and Ier is I."

"Daniel," Jack observed, "I think they're snickering at your accent." The two aliens were trying to hold back girlish fits of giggling. He cleared his throat and got their attention.

Chf'aza turned around and called, "Edan!" Another darker-skinned alien stepped out from behind a dirt pile that was near the DHD. This one was obviously male, and he came forward and said, "Ier Chf'Edan. Liasi seme dama." He gave Liasi a hug. "Beneven a Hra."

A red flag shot up in Jack's mind. "Ra?" He gripped his P90.

"Wait," Daniel said. "There are some cognates here. Beneven—welcome, perhaps? I think he said, 'Welcome to Hra.'"

"Let's see. Ra was the sun god, right?" He pointed at the sun and said, "Ra?"

"Ah...ne, ne," said Edan. He pointed at the sun and said, "Shal." Then he pointed at the ground. "Hra." He gestured at the other two aliens. "Nier hra'vakh. Tir?"

"Nier humans," Daniel replied. "From Earth." He gestured with his hands, simulating a sphere.

"From..." Edan repeated, struggling with the word. Then he gestured similarly to Daniel and said, "Hra?" Daniel nodded. "Ah. Tir ader Earth. Nier ader Hra. Humans ader earth; hra'vakh ader Hra."

"They're trying to teach us the language," Daniel said, turning around. "This is different than anything I've ever heard, expect of course for the cognates. Maybe they're untouched by the Goa'uld." He turned to Edan and asked, "Do you know of the Goa'uld?"

"Goa'uld?"

He drew a rough sketch of a symbiote, and then a sketch of a hra'vakh with glowing eyes. Then he drew a ha'tak. "Goa'uld."

"Goa'uld," Edan said, joining Daniel in sketching. He drew a flower, a quadripedal animal, and several other things including charicatures of SG-1.

"No, that's drawing."

"Drawing?"

"Yes." He motioned to the Stargate. "What do you call that?"

Edan looked back at the others and shrugged. "Ier e'nese."

"'Je ne sais pas', maybe," Daniel mumbled. "He doesn't know what to call the Stargate. Chappa'ai?"

"Eh?" Edan grunted. Daniel tried again. "Khes 'chappa'ai'?"

Aza walked up next to him and whispered something. Then she said, "You said 'Stargate'. We...doesn't know."

"Well you certainly picked that up fast," Daniel chuckled. "The correct word is 'don't.' We _don't_ know. Nier e'nese."

"Ah."

"Well with the language barrier, I don't think we'll get very far," Jack said. "Carter, dial us out. We should go."

"Go?" Aza asked.

"Go," Daniel explained, walking up to the gate. He stepped through the empty ring.

"Ah," Aza smiled. She nodded and then said, "Go."

Daniel turned to Jack and said, "I think she knows we'll be back." He came back around to the front and held out his hand as the wormhole was activated. She took it and shook it, smiling broadly. "Well at least she knows how to do that," Carter remarked. She input the IDC and they stepped through the gate.


	2. What Did You Say?

02 What Did You Say

Aza sat at her desk, scribbling down notes on a pad. "Did you get any pictures of those guys?" she asked Edan.

"What?" he replied. "I wasn't paying attention."

"On the arm patches, they had several of their language's letters. I just can't remember what they were." She had figured out some of their language structure, and found it fairly hard to speak some of it, at least without a hra'anh accent. She longed to talk to them again, to try and glean more. It was a new and exciting challenge and it kept her brain working. "So what have you found out about the ring?" she asked. "Or, as they called it, the Stargate?"

"The metal it is composed of is incredibly heavy and durable, as you have probably seen. It's also a superconductor." He took a piece of paper out of the folder he held. "Here are some results of some tests we did on it."

She looked over the piece of paper and the figures puzzled her. "You're saying this thing is one giant circuit board?"

"I'm saying this thing is more advanced than us. Not even our oldest ancestors could have built it."

"So what else is new?" she sighed.

"Actually, an archeological team found a depiction of the ring in an ancient ocean-floor city. And it comes with an instruction manual."

"In that language of the gate's glyphs?"

"No. In ancient hra'anh."

"Oh?" This perked her interests.

"The archaeologists can't make out most of it, save for the words that have survived, but they know that what they found is the key to operating the gate."

"Well I know how to operate it," she replied. "You just press on the symbols in a certain order and put your hand on the orange thing in the middle. Then the gate opens. But I want to see it anyway. I'm in the mood for a swim."

* * *

Daniel banged his fist on the table. He couldn't understand any of the language of the hra'vakh. Despite the few cognates he'd picked up, he had no basis. He didn't even have an alphabet to work with. He longed for another visit, but unfortunately there was no real reason until the language barrier was cracked.

"Unscheduled offworld activation," said Harriman over the intercom. It was standard procedure for returning SG teams. All they needed was their IDC and they'd be let in. Otherwise, they'd just be splattered against the iris. Then the thought crossed his mind that the attempted visitor could be somebody from Hra. He dropped his forehead to the table at the prospect, hitting it with a dull _thump_. Then another voice came over the intercom.

"Dr. Jackson, get down to the gate room immediately." When General Hammond summoned somebody to the gate room, particularly when using a modifier such as "immediately", they didn't hesitate. So he dropped what he was doing and headed over to the room.

"What's going on?" he asked when he arrived. In the center of the room stood a life-sized, fairly realistic hologram of Chf'aza.

The image turned to Daniel and said, "Daniel, go to Hra. I teach you. You teach me."

"The wormhole is still active," he pointed out to General Hammond. "Is this a transmission?"

"I don't know how it works. It got tossed through the gate just before the iris closed."

"I...learn your language, Daniel. I learn. Teach me. Esha se tira." She pointed to the holographic generator, and then vanished as the wormhole deactivated.

"What did she say at the end?" Hammond asked.

"If I'm right...'this is yours.'"

"A gift, then."

Daniel went and picked up the device, then examined it for any markings. It was roughly the size of a Frisbee, made of what had to be carbon-steel, and on the bottom was a large, red button with a painted arrow pointing to it. "I'll go analyze this," he said, taking it back to his notes. He pushed the button and set it on the ground.

The hologram reappeared, but this time it was a prerecorded message of Aza presenting several facts about the language, using what broken English she knew. He found it strange that she had an almost British accent when she spoke it, and he wondered why, but decided to ask her later. She gave him the alphabet and several pronunciation and usage rules, which she explained as basically as possible. Then she gave him several commonly used words, likening them to gestures and presenting pictures with them. "She's trying to give me a Rosetta Stone," he remarked as the hologram finished and died. Having forgotten a good deal of the lesson, he replayed it, this time trying to write down the words and their rough translations.

Time and time again he had to watch the message, until finally he was reading and writing a fair amount of the language, which she referred to as "hra'anh". He knew enough to speak a bit, and he wished he could give Aza the same kind of gift she had. But he didn't have the time or the resources. He'd just have to arrange a visit.

* * *

Aza stared at the blue event horizon as it faded out of existence. "Fascinating," she remarked. "So what did the cameras pick up?"

"Just as you suspected, they have a shield that they use to block unwanted visitors. That rock you tossed after you tossed the holo generator never made into the room. But the generator did, obviously."

"I hope I got the message across," she sighed. "He seemed to understand me...and with the big red button and arrow...could I have been clearer?"

"We'll have to see," she said. "Until then, let's go on what we gathered." She picked up the companion holo generator to the one she'd tossed through, and brought it back to her base of operations so she could download the data and analyze it. She'd come up with more of the language from Daniel's behavior, which the holo generator recorded, but without actually being taught, it was like teaching oneself to read.

She sat down and began analyzing the data. Hours passed without incident, but suddenly she heard something dialing the gate. She got up and walked over as the wormhole activated. "I didn't expect him this quickly," she thought aloud. But it was not Daniel who walked through. Two men carrying large staves and wearing heavy armor stepped through. They looked like Daniel, except that they wore metallic caps and on their foreheads were tattooed the stylized likeness of an erupting volcano. Once they were through, the one with the golden tattoo said, "Make way for Pele, goddess of fire."

Aza couldn't understand the language they were speaking, but she recognized it as the same one Daniel spoke. "Hello," she said in English. A third individual stepped through the event horizon, clad in a tight-fitting leather outfit and wearing what appeared to be a glove on her left hand.

"I am Pele!" she said in an unnaturally low, mechanical voice. "Bow before me."

"I don't understand," Aza said in English.

"Bow!"

She didn't know the meaning of the word. She walked forward and held out her hand to shake, but Pele threw her back with some invisible force coming from the device on her left hand. She drew her pistol and aimed it at Pele. "You dare attack me?" she said in her native language. The two armored men looked at each other, and Pele looked at each of them. They mumbled something amongst themselves as Aza slowly lowered her pistol.

"I shall return," Pele snarled, stepping to the side of the gate as one of the armored men dialed it. The wormhole opened, the visitors stepped through, and then the wormhole promptly closed.

"Weird," Aza remarked. "Edan, did you see that?"

"I heard," he replied, running up with his pistol drawn. "Who was that?"

"She said her name was Pele. I can only assume she was not here to make friends like Daniel was." She recalled a pictograph in the ruins at the bottom of the sea that depicted an armored individual carrying a similar staff with a similar tattoo that looked like an eye. It had said they were enemies called "shafa" that came through the Stargate thousands of years before the current historical record had been started. "Those were shafa," she said. "At least I think that's what they were. The one that seemed to be their leader...I don't really know what she was."

"Well is there a way to keep them from coming back?"

"Yeah," she replied. "Stack a crapload of boxes in the ring. They don't have to have anything in them, either."

"I'm on it," he replied. "You should go back to whatever you were doing."

"I'll get back to it tomorrow," she replied. "It's late and I'm tired, so I'm going home."

"All right, I'll see you later."

She packed her things into her backpack and sealed it, and then walked to the shoreline. Usually she just walked in, but today she wanted to try something new. The waves were small, but they still had their normal suction. As one receded, she ran forward and dove in, trying to catch the current. She let the water fill the gills on her sides, breathing deeply of the oxygen-rich brine.

She lived in the city of Vi'aka, the first underwater city built by the hra'vakh. They were entirely capable of living underwater like fish, but nevertheless, they decided to live inside an immense bubble. It was a feat of engineering accomplished by her father-in-law based on his father's research and development. It still had several flaws, though; the immense pressure on the glass of the dome, no matter how thick it was, meant that maintenance was paramount. One fissure in any of the seamless panels would spell disaster for the inhabitants within. Aza had been trying to come up with a feasible forcefield-based alternative to the glass dome for years without any success. And she hoped that for a small trade, the people of Earth may be able to help.

She thought it a pity that hra'vakh used submersible boats to commute to the city, rather than swimming. She had always enjoyed the cold water, and she felt at home in the sea. She knew of several esoteric families that lived underwater outside of the city, but then they were not the most civilized of people. They didn't trust the government, and they didn't trust its citizens even though war and tyranny were things of the past.

She swam up to one of the watergates—similar to airlocks—and flooded the inner chamber. She swam inside once the outer door was open, and then drained the chamber as the internal blowers flooded the room with a hot wind, drying her and her clothes off and restoring any lost body heat. She opened the inner door and stepped out into the city.

Underwater it was just as bustling as the capital city, Vi'oh, was at any given time. The immense dome had a system for simulating weather patterns, mirroring surface conditions. The fake sun was in the process of setting as she walked to the palace, where she was once queen. She was glad that her daughter Sakara had finally decided to take the throne; up until she was almost thirty years old she wanted nothing to do with governance. But Danh, her best friend and now her husband, convinced her that she was needed for the city and that her aunt Liasi couldn't do it all. Aza had pointed out to Sakara that it would be much easier for her to rule than it was for her mother. Aza's husband Nashan, the king of the underwater city, died at the hands of a sniper in the campaign to overthrow her brother Chf'banakh, who had come to power when he hired a hitman to get rid of their father Alesh.

Banakh's campaign against the underwater kingdom, who was at that time a separate entity from the land-dwelling hra'vakh, was nearly a success. But Aza's brother Drak led her in the fight against their brother, eventually resulting in Banakh's death and Drak's ascension to the land-dwellers' throne. He unified the kingdoms, but it still left Aza in charge of the entire underwater city, which was a much harder job than being a chieftain.

She still hadn't found another husband. She'd been too busy with her archaeological and technological duties to look, but it was beginning to take a toll on her. She felt an empty loneliness that tugged at her harder and harder every day. Her family and friends tried to console her, but it wasn't working. It seemed nobody wanted her the same way Nashan had.

She arrived at the palace and her granddaughter Etahi greeted her with a hug. "Grandma, it's so good to see you again!" the three-year-old said with an enormous smile.

"You too, Etahi," she smiled.

* * *

Pele sat on her throne, massaging her temples. Her first prime, Jin'tec, stood next to her. "What am I doing wrong?" she thought aloud. She didn't have enough clout for the System Lords to recognize her as an entity. She actually doubted they knew of her existence. Her people didn't follow her out of fear like many of the other worlds controlled by the Goa'uld. Instead, they followed her because they liked her. She was charismatic, fun-loving, and easygoing. And it was pissing her off.

"To what are you referring?" Jin'tec asked.

"The planet we visited earlier," she sighed. "I tried being more assertive like you told me, but it didn't work."

"She didn't understand your language."

"But everybody understands the language of the taur'i."

"Apparently not," he replied.

"What should I do?" she asked. "With a barrier that great, there is nothing I can use to assert my dominance!"

"Kill a few of them, my lord."

"What will that do but assert that they are expendable? I'm sorry, Jin'tec, but I have a feeling killing them will just make them fight back more."

"Then kidnap one of them."

"That still presents the problem of the language barrier."

"If we can find a symbiote ready for implantation," he said, "we won't need to learn the language. The host can translate."

She sat back and smiled, stroking her chin as she pondered. "I doubt even the illustrious Ba'al could come up with that plan."

"Actually," said another Goa'uld voice, "I did come up with it."

"Ba'al!" she nearly shrieked, adjusting her tresses. Her host had been infatuated with the System Lord ever since she had first seen him a decade or so before. And, naturally, she shared her host's attraction. "What brings you here?"

"Jin'tec informed me of your struggles with control," Ba'al said as he walked into the room. "I decided, since you were new to the game, I would humor you with a few words of advice."

"Lord Ba'al, I am honored by your presence," she said, bowing her head. "If it would please you, I offer--"

"Please, I want nothing of yours, save maybe an alliance once you gain a foothold with the System Lords. You show great promise, Pele."

"How do you want me to go about this capture?"

"First you need to gather some intelligence about the enemy."

"We know they don't speak our language."

"Really?" Ba'al sounded intrigued.

"No. Neither do we speak theirs. It is possible that they have been untouched by the gods."

"Then you have found quite a challenge. I want to know how it pans out. In the meantime, however, I have to get back to work. I shall check up on you periodically." He stepped into the center of the room where lay the transporter rings, and activated them with the device on his wrist.


	3. Problems

03 Problems

"What do you mean it won't open?" Daniel stood with SG-1 in disbelief at the words he heard Harriman say: "Chevron seven...will not lock." That meant only one thing: Hra's gate was no longer accessible.

General Hammond came over the intercom. "I'm sorry, Dr. Jackson, there's nothing we can do."

"Sorry, Daniel," Jack said, patting him on the shoulder. "I guess they didn't want us anyway."

Just as he was about to walk away from the gate, the alarm sounded and Harriman said, "Unscheduled offworld activation." The iris closed and Daniel headed up to the control room just as he heard, "Receiving a transmission, sir. Audio only."

"Put it on speaker."

Daniel listened as Aza's voice came over the loudspeaker in her native language. "Dr. Jackson, can you understand any of this?"

"Yes I can," he replied.

"Were you the ones that dialed in just now?"

"Yeah, we were."

"What's she saying?" Hammond asked.

"She asked if we tried to contact her," he translated as she continued to talk. "She says they obstructed the gate so that...Pele couldn't dial in again. Who's Pele?" He cleared his throat and listened again. "She wants an iris."

"We'll see what we can do. Maybe that could be what we trade. Can you talk to her?"

"Aza?" he asked.

"Yes?" she replied in English.

"Will you let us through?" he asked in hra'anh.

"You got my gift," she replied. Daniel translated everything she said. "I was hoping that it would help our relations."

"Who is Pele?" he asked.

"I was hoping you could tell me, Daniel. Come back to Hra and we'll chat."

"All right," he replied in English. The wormhole deactivated. "Go ahead and dial again," he said. "They're wanting us to visit." As Harriman dialed the gate, he went back to the gate room with SG-1 and prepared to step through to Hra once again.

"Pele?" Jack asked.

"She was the Hawaiian goddess of fire, among other similar things. I can only assume a goa'uld found the planet...But I don't know any from Hawaiian mythology. She must be a nobody."

"Then we won't have a problem."

"Maybe the tok'ra know about her," Sam suggested. "It's worth a shot."

"Well," Daniel said as the wormhole opened, "here goes nothing."

They stepped through the event horizon to a much friendlier welcome than before: Aza, Liasi and Edan were there, along with two other hra'vakh. One was a deeply azure-skinned woman, and the other was a man of about Edan's height and build with slightly lighter skin.

"Welcome," Aza said as Daniel translated. "We are the royal family."

"Really?" he said, intrigued. "So who is whom?"

"I was queen of the underwater realm," Aza replied, "until my daughter was old enough to take control." She put her hand on the azure-skinned woman's shoulder. "You know Liasi and her son Edan, but you still haven't met Drak, Edan's father."

"So you make up the entire governing body?"

"No. I'll explain it to you later. But first, come with me."

As they walked, Daniel asked again, "Who exactly is Pele?"

"She came with several shafa-"

"Don't you mean jaffa?"

"The depiction we found in the ruins undersea clearly said 'shafa'. It's possible the ancients mispronounced it." She took him into a tent where a hologram of a video feed hovered a foot and a half above the table. "This is footage of the incident."

"She's a goa'uld," he said in English after seeing it. Then he explained to her in her native language who the goa'uld were and what their purpose was. He asked whether the hra'vakh had a religion.

"Yes we do," she replied. "We are monotheistic, worshiping an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deity, Akh. He is our creator, our protector, and our provider."

"Is there any evidence of the goa'uld or jaffa here before?"

She nodded. "We found some carvings in a ruined, ancient undersea city that depicted several of these...Jaffa. It told how they came through the stone ring that the sons of the gods brought to Hra. They started massacring the people, and Akh Himself stepped in and saved them."

"Perhaps Akh is an Ascended being."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Maybe he's a being of pure energy that-"

She cut him off, shaking her head. "No. None can see him without risking instant death. These 'Ascended beings' as you call them, I have seen. We call them Ghosts. They are what became of the ones that brought the stone ring."

"Okay, so if Akh isn't an Ascended, what is He?"

"God. That's what He is."

"Okay, new topic. You said that there are ruins undersea. Is there any way I can have a look?"

"Not without gills." She lifted the hem of her shirt to show him the slits on her side.

"Surely you must have some submersible craft."

"If I took you down in a boat, you wouldn't be able to get as close a look as you would want. Know that I'm not trying to keep you from the ruins; I just know that it would be incredibly hard for me to show them to you."

"I've got it!" he proclaimed. "SCUBA!"

"SCUBA?" she asked quizzically.

"It stands for 'Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus'. Basically, it's a tank I hold on my back that lets me breathe underwater. Either that, or I could use a rebreather." He made a face showing he disliked that prospect.

"I can take you to Vi'aka, though."

The name translated to "city of water". "Where, exactly, is that?"

"Beneath the surface of the sea. We can get there by boat."

* * *

Jack bounced a tennis ball against the wall. "Any news from the tok'ra?" he asked.

"Not yet," Sam replied. "Sir, is something bothering you? You're acting a bit…strange recently."

He caught the ball and shrugged. Nothing was wrong. It was perfectly right. He was in love with her. Plain and simple. But heck, there was nothing he could do about it; he was her direct superior, and it was taboo. But it didn't change his feelings. What made it worse was that she seemed to be oblivious to his attraction. He wished they could be together, but no. Procedure and the conventions of the US Air Force prevented them.

"Unscheduled offworld activation," Harriman said over the PA system. Jack hopped over a room to the gate control room just in time to see General Hammond hovering over the gate operator's shoulder. "Receiving IDC, sir. It's the tok'ra."

"Open the iris," the general ordered. The barrier slid away and an individual stepped through. Jack recognized her as Anise the tok'ra, somebody whose host was attracted to him in a way he didn't particularly welcome. Jack went down and welcomed her.

"Anise," he smiled. "And Freya."

"Yes, Colonel," said the host, Freya, with a smile. He had to hand it to Anise for choosing a host who was incredibly attractive, but Freya didn't hold a candle to Sam.

"Do you have any information for us?"

"Yes, we do," replied Anise. They walked up to the briefing room and joined General Hammond and the members of SG-1 who weren't offworld. "Where is Dr. Jackson?" asked the tok'ra.

"He's on P6X-556 trying to learn a new language. We have a world potentially untouched by the goa'uld."

"Really?" Anise said inquisitively. "I would like to meet these people."

"Not quite yet, Anise. We're still trying to find out more about them and whether they'd welcome somebody so closely related to the goa'uld. No offense."

"I suppose I could overlook it. But I really would like Dr. Jackson to be here before we begin."

"I could recall him," the general suggested.

"Please."

Jack sighed. While Freya was attracted to him, the tok'ra symbiote she carried was equally attracted to Daniel. It was quite unlike a tok'ra to put the desires of her heart before the pressing issues, but he tried to dismiss it as the general excused himself and left the room. Daniel would benefit greatly from this information.

Half an hour later, Daniel was sitting in the briefing room, Anise doing an unusually poor job of hiding her emotions. "So," he asked, "did you find out anything about Pele?"

"We did, actually," Anise replied. "You guessed that she was a nobody, and you were right for the most part. Pele is a smalltime goa'uld in charge of several worlds. We have a loyal jaffa in her ranks. He reported to us that she is of no threat on her own; her ruling style is less oppressive and more…well, like a tok'ra would be. It has been since before he joined her ranks."

"That's weird," Jack commented. "So she makes people love her instead of fear her?"

"Exactly, Colonel."

"That makes no sense," Sam added. "Aren't the goa'uld genetically wired to be aggressive?"

"We are not," Anise said, taking offense.

"But I don't consider you goa'uld anymore," Daniel came back, stroking Anise's ego. "So you say that Pele's subjects respect her instead of being afraid of death."

"Yes. From Esili's reports, she holds massive banquets and parties, inviting all of the people from the planet she is on at the time. The societies thrive and are healthy."

"So we don't have a problem, then," Jack shrugged.

"Actually, we do."

"I knew it."

Anise continued, "Pele is a nobody because of her unorthodox methods. The System Lords see her as weak, too young to know how to control large populations. In order to gain more favor among the System Lords, her First Prime, Jin'tec, encouraged her to be more assertive and forceful. When she failed at that, he sought Ba'al to help teach Pele to be more like a goa'uld."

"Yeah, that'd be a problem," Daniel sighed. "How do we fix it?"

"I honestly don't think Pele will change unless she's under duress. But Esili also reports that Pele is attracted to Ba'al and that she believes following his advice, no matter how uncharacteristic of her it may be, will bring the two of them closer together."

"Good God, everybody's falling in love," Jack groaned. All eyes turned to him. "Did I say that out loud?"

"Yes, Jack," Sam replied. "You did."


End file.
